Thomas Pynchon Books

byJosh HanagarneonJuly 1, 2011

One of the few photos of the reclusive and elusive Thomas Pynchon

I have been getting back into Thomas Pynchon recently. I picked up a copy of Mason & Dixon at the library and haven’t been able to put it down. However, like most Thomas Pynchon books, it’s kind of slow going. Which is part of the fun.

If you’ve ever read Mr. P. and can enjoy his work, you know what I mean. Try racing through these books and your comprehension will be poor.

Throw in the fact that the books also have mysteries and/or riddles to be unraveled and you’ve got the opposite of the kind of books that you can speed-read.

Anyway, I’m going to use this page for a complete list of Thomas Pynchon’s books, and I’ll come back and add brief reviews as I go through them again. I can’t find any of them on the Kindle, except on audio, which is a bummer for me, but oh well.

Thomas Pynchon bibliography

V.

The Crying of Lot 49

Gravity’s Rainbow

Slow Learner

Vineland

Mason & Dixon

Against The Day

Inherent Vice

If you haven’t ever tried to read one of his novels I would suggest reading Lot 49 first, but I’d suggest reading it twice in a row. Much of the frustration that you will feel on the first reading will disappear the second time through, but not all of it.

Appropriately, it’s a book about a secret society that is still full of secrets every time I read it.

Mason & Dixon

But they’re all wonderful. Pynchon is one of my very favorite authors. I’m not always in the mood for his work, but when I am, it is as fun as anything in literature.

I’ll be back soon with a review of Mason. I should be through reading it in the next week and will be able to figure out how to summarize it. Not an easy task with any of these books.